La Niña Expected to Stick Around

To some areas’ benefit and others’ detriment, it looks like La Niña is going to continue to influence the nation’s weather through the fall, USDA reports.

Drought is expected to persist or even continue to intensify over the Southern Plains all the way through the autumn months, and the only thing at this point that would provide some type of relief would be a tropical storm, says Brad Rippey, USDA meteorologist.

The cause of the dry weather is a La Niña system in the Pacific Ocean that is affecting U.S. weather.

Rippey says we have at least at a 50/50 chance that we will slide back in to at least a moderately strong La Niña event, and that could have even more devastating consequences for Texas, Oklahoma and other drought ravaged areas.

In the Southeast, drought conditions have been lessening, but La Niña could change that.

While La Niña is exacerbating drought in some parts of the country, it could relieve it in the Midwest.

We would like to see a little bit of a resurgence of some of the rains across some of the Midwest, and if we do see La Niña returning, that could be a boon, Rippey says.